Under Pressure

Posted on 25 Mar 2016 @ 3:27am by Jynn & Ensign Miraj Derani

3,213 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 10 - Symposium
Location: Jupiter
Timeline: MD91, 0930

[ON]

Miraj paced her quarters, trying and failing to come to a decision on what to do. She needed to know what the other pilots could do. their files listed years of experience, but test scores and hours accumulated just felt meaningless. She needed to know more about them than a dry file.

Should she have a meeting of all of them. Or meet them one on one. One on one would be easier, but that would also mean she'd be alone with the person who'd she'd replaced.

She hadn't been given the details. Sudden demotion. Some sort of scandal. How would he react to being replaced? Would he resent her for a public humiliation if she had a group meeting first? Or if she kept it one on one, would he take the opportunity to tear into her?

She paced a bit more, turning the dilemma over. Eventually she came to a halt, and sent a request to his padd, to meet her in the shuttle bay as soon as he could.

The call came in. The Deltan ex-pilot was to meet his replacement. Was Jynn expecting it? Yes. Was he looking forward to it? Well that was a multi-faceted question. It was certainly something that needed to be addressed and he knew that if it had to happen that it would be best to just get it over with. But was he going to actually enjoy it? Probably not. It was going to be, in a word, awkward.

But at that moment he didn't know how exactly to feel. Relieved. Anxious. Angered or stressed? There were so many options but his mind couldn't choose a single one. Better to just let the mind decide once the meeting had been made. There was no need to jump to any emotional conclusions just yet. He made haste to the shuttle bay. A good place for fellow fliers to meet.

Minutes, or perhaps an immeasurable eternity later, and he had arrived in the bay. Three bodies were in the bay waiting for him. First there was the overworked Celeste, who Jynn had been tending to for the past half week after she had so selflessly cared for every ache and pain of the Galileo. Then there was Pisa, the full figured one that had moved around so many of the crew in the days of shore leave. But the last figure was not a shuttle. Those other two were off running about or whatever else they were doing in regards to their namesakes. No, the third body was organic. The body that now occupied the title of chief flight control officer.

Pink haired and a streamlined body. She looked like she was already ready for takeoff. She fit the image of a pilot perfectly, soaring through her surroundings. But now was not the time for Jynn to admire his replacement. He was reporting in to a superior.

"Jynn, reporting as requested. Was there anything in particular that you needed?"

Miraj wasnt sure what she was expecting beyond bald because Deltan. She definitely wasn't expecting this lean and gorgeous young man with tattoos snaking across his skin and down into his uniform. "Take me flying." She said, a little breathless.

Cutting right to the chase. Jynn could admire that. Besides, was there any better place for two pilots to acclimate to each other than side by side at the helm? Of course not. "How about we go for a ride with Pisa? She may seem a bit worse for wear, especially with her frequent use during everyone's shore leave, but I'll be happy to show you that despite her exhausted appearance she still performs quite well."

Miraj found herself smiling. His warm words for the ships mirrored her own attitude to the creatures of steel and glass that she flew with. Most people thought she was weird for how she saw ships and shuttles, but could Jynn be a kindred spirit? "Sounds good." She glanced around, and immediately saw the slightly scuffed looking Polaris transport. They were solid, dependable little ships, modular like runabouts, though about half the size.

She walked to it, and stroked the hull next to the door. "Hello, old girl, ready for a spin?" she asked it. Then she looked over her shoulder to Jynn. "I want to see what you can do with her. Show me what you and her can do together."

Jynn flashed an excited smile at the pink haired pilot, forgetting all his woes for the moment as the prospects of soaring through the stars once more came to the fore of his thoughts. “We dance,” was all he answered as he gestured for the new chief of flight to board the shuttle ahead of him.

He was certainly making a good first impression on her. She felt a little twinge of sympathy for him. It must have been gutting to be stripped of his role and be denied the chance to fly. She dropped into the co-pilots seat, and programmed in a set of co-ordinates. "Take me there. Make it fun."

The navigation panel showed Jupiter's Red Spot, The eye of the storm.

“Must I perform for such an agitated observer,” Jynn questioned playfully as he brought the shuttle up and out of the bay with ease. “And I do mean the red eyed king of gods, not you,” he clarified with a smirk.

She thought about it. most space pilots never really played in atmosphere and she was probably the only person in the galaxy who would think being dumped into the centuries old superstorm would be no more challenging than a game of tag at recess. "If you don't fancy it, you can choose somewhere else. Just show me what you've got."

“I fancy it just fine. Besides, tumultuous is in my nature. I'll feel right at home in those shifting changing clouds.” This was true of the Deltan. The storms of Jupiter were practically a metaphor for Jynn's life at this point in time. How appropriate for the pilot to face it head on. “Just keep in mind, once we dive in there's no turning back.”

She laughed. "I've flown through much rougher," she assured him. "But for now, I'm completely in your hands. Impress me."

“Understood.”

It took only a few snaps of a finger for the shuttle to begin its approach through Jupiter's atmosphere and this was quite literally the case as Jynn had been snapping a tune while the shuttle was brought in via it's autopilot. He was quite nonchalant, as if this had not been his first time.

“Commencing impressing,” Jynn shot through a grin to his copilot with unrestrained enthusiasm.

Passing through the storm was largely unimpressive at first. Clouds here. Clouds there. Clouds everywhere. Just a bunch of cold colorful gas. Totally unimpressive.

Then, it hit. The turbulent forces of the most aggressive portion of the storm: the eye wall. There was where it started to get jittery. Uncertain. Dangerous. The eye's first impression of the observed craft must not have been favorable as the ship began to shake and jerk through tumultuous winds.

“Are we having fun yet,” Jynn questioned the pink-haired siren that had called him to the storm.

She shucked off her boots, to enjoy the sensations of the ship more, and her face was alive with a primal joy as they dropped through the atmosphere, and the tug of the giant's gravity began to tax the inertial dampers and the internal gravity. She let out a whoop of excitement as they hit the six hundred KMph winds of the Anti-cyclone. that had been blowing for centuries.

But she had to sit on her hands to not reach for the controls and let herself and the ship roll around with glee. "Not yet!" she grinned, "Is this it?" She goaded him. A cross wind buffeted them, the inertial dampeners taking the turbulence down to merely a a wild punch to the hull that sent them lurching sideways. "My nanny could make it more interesting."

“Really? Well is she a dancer? Because I doubt she could 'get down' quite like I can,” he shouted ecstatically as the shuttle took a sudden and sharp dive downward. The ship was immediately rocked by the combination of g-forces and the sudden spike in temperature and pressure. Between press, pull, and propulsion it wouldn't take long for that little shuttle to become a permanent companion of the God-named planet.

They plunged down inside the wall of wind, faster and faster, till the inertial dampers were screaming and the internal gravity gave up. The shuttle broke the 'surface' of the planet, where the clouds were thick but not yet liquid. Miraj felt the shift in pressure across the the skin of Pisa as the heavier atmosphere bore down, and shivered with a the thrill. The temperatures were rising, the liquid layer not far below. She held her breath as she felt the little shuttle began to balk at the course. How far would the Deltan go? Would she have to step in?

“What's the matter? Can't handle the pressure?”

From the way the question had been asked in those frantic moments you would have had to wonder whether he was asking himself, his newly acquainted replacement, Pisa herself, or some combination thereof. Regardless of who he was questioning it was clear that in only a few more seconds time the answer for any and all of them would have been a resounding 'no!' Tension was rising. Pressure was building. It was as though they were about to POP!

So it was a good thing Jynn pulled up when he did. The ship was as stressed as a pre-wedding bride and as disheveled as the same post-consummation and was already about ready to divorce it and it's crew from the mortal coil with a tearful shriek. The groaning slowly came to a steady lull as the ship started gaining altitude once more. It sure was a close one.

“That was a close one!”

Miraj nodded. He'd pushed the ship to the edge, possibly over it, if the stuttering she could feel through her feet was anything to go by, but he seemed to have timed it right and now they were heading up through the still air of the storm's eye.

And then the power died.

Everything went out. The thrusters, the impulse engine, the gravity. Pisa stalled, flipped over back through the eyewall into the seven hundred mile an hour winds, and fell back towards the sea of liquid gas.

A fraction of emergency power clicked in; alarms blared and red lights flashed as Pisa and her occupants were put into a panic. Warning messages started popping up one after another, but Jynn was acutely aware of the most pressing one. There was an explosion of sparks near the back of the shuttle that could only signify one thing to the observant Deltan.

The engines' electrical breaker had blown and with it it had taken out any chance of wiring it all back together with it. It was toast and if he didn't find a way to fix it fast so where they. His brain quickly started working ahead of his body, planning out a suitable fix for when he got to the problem.

"We're god damned! Quick! Take the helm and wait for my signal," he shouted as he pulled himself up from his seat and flung himself to the back of the ship. "We only have a few moments before we're swallowed whole!"

Miraj dived across, poised over the dead controls, she could feel the tension all across the hull, the strain of the gas-giants heightened gravity tearing at the ship, screaming across her sense of the vessel.

She put one hand on the cockpit window, feeling the ever increasing pressure, and got a look down through the whitie clouds, only to see more white clouds below. They must have fallen a couple of thousand meters in just the seconds that took. The pressure was the heightened gravity was making her head spin, and she could feel pressure building.

If they had enough time to reach terminal velocity, they'd be going hundred of meters a second. They'd be plunged into the freezing oceans of liquid hydrogen under the surface of Jupiter, and from there would plummet into the the infernal temperatures of the outer core and be flashfried

"Now, we need power now!" Without power to the helm, there was nothing she could do.

Panic and pressure both were rising as Jynn crashed into the wall adjacent the main distribution panel. Were it not for the explosion earlier he would have had to tear open the panel door to access it, but that was unfortunately taken care of.

It didn't look good. A good chuck of the systems were inoperable, but there was still a chance. Some systems remained. Enough for an at-death's-door man with basic electrical knowledge to handle in a pinch.

He quickly started messing with the awful mess of wires. The main line through to the plasma injector pump was annihilated beyond repair, but the life support line was mostly intact. Despite the smaller size of the line it would have to do. He tied the injector power line through the partially mangled life support line and gave a shout back to Miraj.

“When you get the power back punch it! This line's gonna fry pretty fast!”

Miraj braced herself in the pilots chair, activating the restraints, hands hovering over the controls. The shuttle was dropping fast, spinning around the yaw axis as it bounced down the thrusts of windThe ship was completely dead, if she couldn't get things moving in half a heartbeat after the power came back, it was going to be ugly. Brief, but ugly.

The gap where the breaker had been was bridged with a chunk of steel. In a second the ugly was about to get uglier. Jynn pulled the lever of the main feed line and in an instant the power came back to what few functional systems there still were... and the plasma injectors. In an instant power was restored to the lifeless impulse engines as the jerry-rigged “power line” started to glow red-hot.

“Now!”

The conn sprung back to life, and she shoved her hands across the pitch and roll, flicking the nose up and around so Pisa's bottom hit a rising gust of the storm and was blown upwards. The shaking across the bulkheads snarled at her bare feet and she could feel the poor shuttle screaming in pain. "Just a bit more," she begged it . "For me."

The impulse engines stuttered into being and they shot upwards, -Gforce grabbed them, crushing Miraj into her seat, and sent her boots tumbling down the length of the shuttle.

The power junction was glowing red hot as the shuttle shot upward and there wasn't a damn thing that Jynn could do about it. This was fortunate, though, as the sudden gravitational forces had thrown him to the back wall of the shuttle at a spot and pressure where he had no chance of doing anything. He was literally stressed under pressure with even slight movements feeling Herculean. And then...

“Aww, sh-”

And then the boot came down! Crash! Right in the kisser. As the tears streamed down his face all he could do was watch the glowing power box and the viewport from afar and hope for their escape. Their lives were now in Miraj's hands.

The Pisa was buffeted from four different directions. The space craft was never meant for anything more complex in atmosphere than stately procession through calm skies and the inertial dampners were only half working and it was tossed around like a stone in an avalanche. The cross winds dragged at her, stealing precious momentum from the wounded impulse engine.

Inside the storm they wouldn't be able to make escape velocity. The could make an emergency transport, but she'd be damned if she abandoned ship whilst there was power to the conn.

The heading she wanted was unachievable. The winds were too strong. She gave up on making the conn fight and changed tack, flying with the wind, spinning in towards the center of the storm, squeezing as much acceleration as she could get from the limping ship, using the force of the winds themselves to push them faster and faster.

"Hold tight!" She warned, and jammed the rear port and forward starboard thrusters to max. The rear end of the ship came up and around, and aerodynamics - or the lack of them- did the rest. The winds at the eyewall, the fastest in the entire storm smacked Pisa across the arse, sending it pitching wildly.

But pitching through the eyewall, and back into calmer sky of the Eye.

What a twist of fate this was for Jynn. Where Miraj had initially put her life in his hands he was now completely at her and the shuttle's mercy. All he could do was brace himself and stare in awe at the raging storm outside of the viewport, hoping they would be guided safely from the storm and away from this planet he was quickly beginning to hate. “Get us out of here!”

He didn't have to ask twice, and set the bearings for orbit. Without the cross winds, the craft powered up through the relatively still skies, the half functioning inertial dampeners only just taking the edge of the gravity rush as they hit escape velocity and burst out of atmosphere into edge of space.

Out of the thrill of atmosphere, Miraj put the craft into autopilot and went to where Jynn was sitting against the bulkhead, and dropped down next to him, relieved it was all over. "So. How do you feel about Beta shift at the Conn?"

“If they don't execute me for our little maneuver,” he questioned with a half-hearted chuckle. “Needless to say I'll be bandaging up this poor ship for the rest of shoreleave. You sure you want me anywhere near a helm? I can be quite flighty.”

Miraj sighed."I can't fly twenty-four-seven, and right now, I've got no auxiliaries. The cadet hasn't had any conn training. I don't know if CPO Darius is or not." She let her head fall back to rest on the bulkhead, felt the reassuring hum of a ship in orbit. The adrenalin was wearing off and she could feel herself beginning to tremble with the lack. "Right now, its only you and me ."

“Right,” Jynn nodded. “I can be your support and to be honest I'd love to sit at the helm again. And speaking of support,” he exclaimed, “we better get back to the Galileo before our life support runs out! So no more detours, alright? I think this has been enough excitement for a first meeting.”

Miraj laughed, "then, in more ways than one, Jynn, the helm is yours. Again."

[OFF]

Ensign Miraj Derani
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Jynn
Support Craft Pilot
USS Galileo
PNPC played by James

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